Support for ISIS in the Muslim World – Perceptions vs Reality

And 44% (the plurality) of Americans believe Muslim views are evenly balanced on the issue.

American perceptions of Muslims’ support for the Islamic State are all over the map. And you only have to search Google for “how many muslims support isis” to see why.

The first result shows “81% of respondents support the Islamic State.” The second result, “Most dislike ISIS in Muslim countries.“

The range of answers to this question reported by the media is enormous, partly because much of it comes from online polls, social media sentiment analysis, and other non-scientific / unrepresentative studies. Additionally, the way the subject gets reported is often very misleading.

All surveys were conducted prior to the recent attacks in Paris and Mali. A list of the specific questions asked in each survey, as well as the answers that constituted a “favorable view of ISIS,” is posted here.

I'm an NYC-based entrepreneur (my newest project: Blueshift) and adjunct instructor at UPenn. I'm fascinated by data visualization and the ways that data is transforming our understanding of the world. I spend a lot of time with my face buried in Excel, and when I find something interesting I write about it here and also as a Guardian Cities and Huffington Post contributor.More about my background

I would argue that the leftover once you count people who have a favorable view is not “overwhelmingly negative.” It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the balance is just neutral. Which, considering that the question is “what is your view of a horrible terroristic organization,” is not a good answer.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Here are the full results from the Pew survey, showing the negative and neutral views. The results in the other surveys is similar.
Hear your point about a neutral response toward a group known for beheadings and mass executions raising some red flags. But part of that is lack of awareness. Seems strange, but in a recent poll taken in Afghanistan, about 20% of people didn’t know anything about ISIS.

Evan Thomas

Perhaps, like the State Dept. they know it better as ISIL (kidding…sort of). What is the implication of these support levels, specifically is it significant that they are low or does it even matter? What is the threshold level of support necessary for a viable terrorist organization, it’s not like they need a majority in any region to support them? ISIS only needs enough people with a favorable opinion to ensure financial and operational support, intelligence, and sufficient recruits.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Not sure about what it means in the short term. In the long term, it’s a fight against an ideology, not a specific terrorist group. So the only thing that matters is acceptance / rejection by the world’s Muslims.

PA

Though I don’t doubt the overall conclusion, I worry that these samples
are biased towards higher SES individuals who have a lot to lose because
they sample mostly city households. Some of them claim to correct for
it, but I’m unconvinced that they sampled rural areas sufficiently to
make that possible.

Looking at the data, though, about 50% of the respondents in
majority-Muslim countries chose the strongest negative option, so it
would probably be right to say that the majority of Muslims in the
Middle East condemn ISIL. Pakistan is somewhat inexplicable, as always.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

It’s a good point. Some of the surveys are explicit about not covering certain provinces. Though with some of the numbers going around (#1 google result shows ISIS getting 81% support), sampling error would be small by comparison.

Not sure what to make of Pakistan. Hard to imagine how 62% could not have an opinion. The Pew report had some other inexplicable numbers too. e.g. 6% of Malaysian Buddhists viewed ISIS favorably. That more than Saudi Arabia, which may have the most extremist Muslim population in the world.

Paddy3118

So multiply by the muslim populations of those countries to give a final figure for the % of muslims in all those countries then.

Your opening is on American perception of Muslims as a whole – not limited to any country Your final result does not go far enough – You hve left a gap in the statistics you do not prove enough, or do the extra work to give Americans, for example, a figure for support amongst American Muslims and maybe contrast that with a figure for American Muslims that work for the state as doctors, firemen, policemen and service men – and women.

You don’t state what percentage of the *worlds* Muslim population in those countries mentioned, support ISIS – And say contrast that with the percentage of American christians that don’t support evolution.

“Here’s some stats” makes for a poor article!

Kevin

Without data for major Muslim countries like India and Bangladesh which together represent approximately 20% of all the world’s Muslims (for comparison, about 20% of Muslims live in Arab countries) this would be a very limited calculation.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

There is nothing wrong with those comparisons, but what’s compared here is Americans’ perception vs reality, as the title says.
Perception: about 50%
Reality: far less than 50% (not enough data to assign a number, but it looks to be in the ballpark of 7%)

Conclusion: Americans overestimate Muslim support for ISIS.

Toby1

So about 10%. Ah well that’s only…. 120 million people

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

The overall number is about 7%, but that’s beside the point.
Yes, it is scary that anyone supports ISIS, let alone 80m people . In that sense, I completely agree these numbers are high. Though most Americans think at least 50% of Muslims support ISIS. Comparatively, 7% is surprisingly low.

Toby1

It only took SEVEN to slaughter and maim 400 people and traumatize an entire city.

PhilGB

What are you arguing? That it doesn’t matter whether the number is 7% or 50%?! Yes, *obviously* no amount of support is “ok,” but that’s the difference between fighting a terrorist group and fighting an entire civilization.

Toby1

I am arguing that when 120 million people want to KILL YOU OR ENSLAVE YOU it really doesn’t matter if they are 7% or 50% percent of the total.
DOES IT

PhilGB

50% of the total would be closer to 800 million people. I say the fewer people that want to kill or enslave me, the better.

Toby1

Yes in the world of footling lefty abstraction, I suppose. In the real world it makes little difference. There is a vast and dangerous problem which we can not wish away, or cure with goody goody gestures.

John

The truth is that you can get 7% of just about any population to say in a poll that they agree with something stupid or psychotic. A good example would be astrology. Polls show that about 1/3 of Americans believe in astrology. While I haven’t seen polling data, my guess is that you could find at least 7% of Americans who think bombing abortion clinics is a swell idea. The real question is how many of those people act on those beliefs. All indications are that it is a tiny fraction of the percentage that “supports” something in the abstract.

Carl Sagan

Whats your point though exactly? That those 7% don’t believe it? How would you disprove that? It takes only one word of support to spread it further. Astrologers don’t go around murdering people! You’re saying people casually support a terrorist group like they support which grocery store they go to? That’s even worse!

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

I think what he is saying is that we should not condemn all Muslims based on what 7% of them think.

He is not saying that people shouldn’t be worried about ISIS. Or that 7% support is “ok.”

ZM

Nobody is condemning all Muslims. People who are concerned are criticizing the Islamic religion/ideology itself. Big difference.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Please explain. What do you see as the difference between condemning a group and condemning the ideology practiced by that group?

For example, what is the difference between condemning the KKK and condemning what the KKK believes?

Either way, I think the comment above is making the point that while 7% may be a large number of people, it is not out of line with the proportion of other extremist beliefs in the U.S. — a good argument that Islam is not the root of the problem.

Fred Garrett

That is a huge percentage. It is shockingly high.

In an effort not to oversimplify the situation, I suppose we should consider that we have one perception of IS, that might be somewhat to do with the way they are presented in our media. While in the countries of origin, the general perception may be very different.

However, as a stand alone article, this seems like fairly solid evidence that Islam has a causal effect on people’s propensity to support murderous causes.

Terrorist acts are somewhat difficult to attribute to this cause; we might argue that insane individuals hijack Islam to commit atrocities.

When 7% of a country’s population can support this behavior there must be some significant causal factor.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Agree with your points. Based on the numbers alone, religion is the obvious explanation. Though there are some stats I’m having a hard time making sense of.

Your numbers are wrong. The main figures from your poll were of the entire populations of those nations. This includes non-muslims. They showed the results by religion on another graphic.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Correct. The 7% is for the entire population. Did I make a mistake and say somewhere that it applied only to Muslims?

In the post, I intentionally tried to avoid the question of whether the numbers are high or low or what they say about Islam, and instead keep it objective. Political polls don’t try to guess the views of people answering “i don’t know,” and it would be silly for me to do so here. In my opinion, there are several “non-scary” ways of interpreting it, though you are welcome to your own interpretation, so not going to debate it.

Ken

“Did I make a mistake and say somewhere that it applied only to Muslims?”

This is what I was referring to.

—————————————————————-
“What the Muslim world actually thinks of ISIS”

“The figures in the map below come from surveys conducted by six different research organizations, covering a combined 20 countries in the Muslim world.”

“what muslims really think of isis”

“In the Muslim world, support for ISIS is low across the board.”
—————————————————————-

Saying, “in the Muslim world” says to the reader that you’re referring to the Muslims in that country.

Talking Monkey

Yes you did: “Though most Americans think at least 50% of Muslims support ISIS. Comparatively, 7% is surprisingly low.” <- you compared the 50% which only applies to Muslims to the 7% that applies to muslims and non-muslims alike. You just skewed the numbers and made it look lower than it actually is.

wickedest

That’s complete bollocks. ISIS is not something you have an “I don’t know” opinion about. They are cutting off heads on video and use that to recruit more fighters from among Muslims. They are destroying important historical monuments. They are reinstating slavery and selling people off, including women and children into sex slavery. They are slaughtering whole villages, they are smuggling people, they are carrying out terrorist attacks worldwide, they are intentionally making people flee their homes to increase migration pressure on Europe.

Anyone whose opinion is “I don’t know” in this poll is an extremely radical Muslim (plus you have to consider the level of honesty in answering such polls in those autocratic countries) and should be counted in the “opposite team”, or at the very least pointed out in a politically non-biased analysis, which this clearly isn’t.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

I think you make a lot of big assumptions about what information people in these countries are exposed to. Though you sound like your mind is pretty well made up, so I’m not going to debate you.

Would only point out that what’s shown here is only observed data, no political analysis of what the data means.

wickedest

You’ve pointed that out numerous times but that doesn’t make it true. As I’m sure you very well know (better than me probably), there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

The fact that you omit data that would make your dataset look very much different to the observer and would make him/her draw very different conclusions, is in itself a type of manipulation and an implicit bias towards a particular political view.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

What data is omitted?

a human

Dude these numbers are frighteningly high. Remember, we are talking about the most extreme element of islam that even al qaeda disagree with. When even ‘moderate Indonesia’ (my country) has 4% support that is serious need for concern.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Dude, of course it’s cause for concern!! We’re talking about a group who brags about beheading people! Consistent with the title, the comparison is vs U.S. perceptions (about 50%). Saying the actual support is “low” is an objective observation, not an opinion of whether people should be concerned.

freedumb123

“Not knowing” what you think about a terrorist organization, is akin to supporting it.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Yes, if someone is unsure how they feel about an evil terrorist group, that’s a very bad sign. But that assumes people in these countries have access to the same information as we do. A large portion aren’t literate, let alone have access to the Internet / news media.

hass

4% would make up answers to questions regarding events they never heard about anyway.

hass

Many Afghans had never heard of 9/11, or New York – they confused the Americans with Russians.

hass

In any poll, a certain % will not honestly reply “Don’t Know” when they really don’t know. Some people express opinions just to appear/feel informed, some people will confuse the names of one with another (“Which ones where the Sunni again?”), etc. This is normal human behaviour.

whatalife1

Well support for ISIS is not the same as support for radical Islamism (or terrorism) since it is not sure even that an Al Qaeda supporter would have a positive view of ISIS

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

You’re right. It is possible to support terrorism and not support ISIS. It is also possible to oppose terrorism, yet support ISIS. I bet much of the support in Syria, for example, has nothing to do with supporting terrorism and everything to do with the the genocide being carried out by the Assad regime against the country’s Sunnis. For many people there, that is an existential threat, so it is not surprising they would support any group who is fighting against Assad.

whatalife1

Yes that is a good point actually. You are probably avoiding making value judgements (for whatever reason) but my view is that Al Qaeda and ISIS are, pretty much, the radical element and have been the main identifiable cause of the current situation and that Assad and Gaddafi are more moderate and are the people that we (from a Western perspective) should have been supporting (if we need to support / attack any side). I don’t think that your accusation of “genocide” is fair and if this is the case it (a) is unavoidable since the alternative is another genocide and (b) is partly “our” fault since NATO countries have been promoting these dangerous radical forces in these countries.

Actually, I’d be very grateful for your view (if possible) on this subject. On the basis of general population figures it looks like Assad could not have got the results in the 2014 election without a sizeable element of the Sunni vote. Do you have a view / data on this? if so, I’d be interested / grateful.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_presidential_election,_2014

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Smart comment. You are probably right that genocide is too strong. But Assad has still killed a lot of people and committed many war crimes, and I don’t see any reason to think it was the only way of stopping ISIS.

Don’t know enough about the situation to add much on why Sunnis would support Assad. Most of the younger, urban population in the Middle East are pretty progressive and educated, and don’t have such a “tribal” mindset. So it wouldn’t surprise me if he got support from that segment. Though that doesn’t account for 90% of the vote.

whatalife1

Thanks, very well balanced comment. I’ll read document again – but couldn’t immediately see complicity. In any case my view is that it is depressing what the United States is doing in the name of “democracy” whilst using public resources in directions which are explicitly anti-democratic and which often have been clearly repudiated by the democratic majority… It is perhaps overly dramatic, but I ask myself if the US government is out of control or if it is itself an imperial project? I still find it interesting that the US and UK planned to bomb Assad with no clear way of stopping ISIS from taking control even if we accept the idea that there are some “moderate rebels”….

Let me give you a radical thesis! The US southern border…the migrant wave in Europe….ISIS in the Middle East….”space to destroy” in Baltimore…”Pussy Riot” in Russia…. In all cases the emphasis is on abnegation of authority and with there being an acceptance of or refusal to oppose anarchism (or, perhaps, radical liberalism)…. Personally I’m for non-interventionism on the grounds of non-interference – though it is difficult to argue that the US should not have opposed the intervention of the USSR and Maoist China in the Cold War – but non-interventionism can sometimes be a form of complicity.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Apologies for the delayed response. Agree with you actually. The US of all places was founded on the principals of liberalism / self-rule. It’s ironic how the US government now uses those same ideas to justify foreign intervention (take out other governments in order to spread freedom). That is the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt, who in my opinion will eventually go down as the worst president in history.

Also agree that complete isolationism is not the answer either. Stalinism, in particular, had the explicit goal of spreading across the world and imposing revolutions in capitalist countries. Not sure if the US handled it correctly, but I don’t think isolationism would have been the right move in that case.
Also, hard to argue that extreme genocide is OK to ignore. In extreme cases like that, non-intervention is complacence.

Need to finish going through the article. If I’m understanding it correctly, it is contrasting Stalism with Marxism is general. Is that correct?

whatalife1

The author was a Marxist (though of an unorthodox type as far as I understand) so you may be right that he is making this comparison though I didn’t notice this and I’d have to read it again to understand this….

This is part of what I thought was interesting (from a book I’m writing on Aristotle’s Politics):

“I note that an almost perfect example of what Aristotle was seeking to avoid in his Politics is provided by Alvin W. Gouldner’s explanation of the Soviet Union’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” outlined in his article “Stalinism: A Study of Internal Colonialism”. Gouldner describes a situation in which:

“According to the Census of 1897, there were then in Russia some 2.5 million industrial workers, 1.25 million soldiers, 1 million bureaucrats, 17,000 students and 100 million peasants ”

and he then shows that the communist elite had an urgent desire to promote the urban “workers” whom they regarded as the driver for economic, i.e. industrial, “progress” and as the harbingers of a truly socialist society but with their bottleneck being that:

“Although viewing the peripheral group [i.e. the peasantry] as morally and culturally inferior, the centre is nonetheless bound to it since it has no alternative sources of supply ”

and with the result being that: “What had then [i.e. at the Revolution] been brought into being was an urban-centred power elite that had set out to dominate a largely rural society to which they related as an alien colonial power; it was an internal colonialism mobilising its state power against colonial tributaries in rural territories ” from which we see precisely how the mentality of colonialism – that one group of people has the right to dominate another in its own interests – can take root and I add that we also see from this example how “ideology” can often act as a form of domination / colonialism and that it is a moving force which can either apply itself externally or internally and hence: “Stalin’s forced collectivisation was…Trotskyism applied within the framework of internal colonisation. Stalin had not so much renounced permanent revolution and its associated policy of revolution from without as he had redirected and displaced it against an internal target by substituting internal colonialism for external revolutionary imperialism, domestic violence for foreign violence ”.”

hass

If you ask,the same % people whether they support Elvis marrying The Abominable Snowman, they will agree or disagree. A percentage of respondents will create opinions on things they know nothing about because they want to not seem foolish or uninformed, and many will also confuse labels too when responding. These are ordinary people after all. This is human nature. A few years ago a tv show used to shove a camera and lights on people and ask their opinions on bands that didn’t exist, showing how they made up answers and expressed opinions anyway.

Ze

150 million

SirGaryColeman

They hate us, but I wonder why? Why are we even over there?

They need a CIVIL WAR just like the USA had – but we keep interfering. Let them sort this out on their own.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Let’s recount how our Middle East involvement has gone so far:
– We install the Shah in Iran, leading to the Islamic revolution
– To fight Iran, we arm Saddam Hussain
– We take out Saddam Hussain allowing ISIS to fill the power void
– We arm the Taliban and Osama Bin Ladin to fight Russia in Afghanistan

Why we continue to involve ourselves over there is beyond me.

Ze

Even if the support is only 10% of the population, out of 1.57 Billion it still is the astonishing number of at least 157 Million of supporters world wide. This translates into a huge country, A larger number than the largest country in population in Europe (Russia with 144 Mil). If only 1% of those 157 million supporters are willing to die for the cause, we are talking about an army of 1,570,000 (1,5 Million people) which is still bigger than the sum of a number of countries in Europe and quite possibly the largest army in the world. But remember, not all Muslims are the same, contrary to what they say:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STmanv1ICkk%5B1%5D

meconiummm

Hmm, what percent of Americans want to kill Muslims? 2%? 3%?

NothingMan00

I’m sure everyone polled was completely forthright.

Martin

The graph is not Muslim population that supports Isis, but total population. Clearly Egyptian Christians don’t support Isis. It isn’t answering the question it claims.

Jayna Johns

Hey Max, I’ve been reading some personal stories of people who have fled from ISIS (refugees) or arrested for being part of ISIS (these are the only people Journalists can really talk to) and most, if not all, talk about being overwhelmingly afraid – they’d go along with anything if it meant keeping their families safe. Because of this, I’m wondering if that fear could’ve altered responses – is it reasonably possible that some respondents didn’t trust who was asking the question, and thought it safer to appear to side with ISIS? The fact that Syria is so high relative to the others makes me think it’s possible, but I’m curious what others would think.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

It’s a good point. Hard to know how much of the responses are truthful.

My guess with Syria is that much of that “support” is a reflection of having Assad as a common enemy. Assad is committing genocide against the Syrian Sunnis & ISIS happens to be fighting against Assad –> not surprising that some of those Sunnis would “support” ISIS, even if they disagree with the ideology.

http://muckrack.com/dotcommodity Susan Kraemer

It would be good to know if that is an uncoerced view. Is the 20% support within Syria is really just terrified locals unable to escape and scared to say what they really think. Whoever has not escaped at this point is a hostage really, they probably pretty much can’t escape – no money at all, or disabled, or they have too young babies to flee, or they’ve been co-opted in (married off to serial ‘freedumb fighters, or conscripted in).

So it would be good to see how do you a poll in such a unique semi-hostage situation.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Yes. Also, when you consider that the Assad regime is committing genocide on the Syrian Sunnis, it is not too surprising that some of them would support ISIS, or any other group that is fighting Assad — hard to tell how much of the support is actually because of agreement with ISIS’s ideology (vs just having a common enemy).

wickedest

So Susan, you assume here that people were sent out to ISIS controlled territory to collect survey data for research purposes? Come on, get real.

lukelea

Exaggeration is useful: it puts a real issue on the table.

PhilGB

Care to elaborate on which of these numbers you view as an “exaggeration?”

holy

thats utter BS, i dont think even a single Pakistani would support ISIS, we’re already fed up with afgani talibans and our Army is killing and wiping all of them out in Afgan border

jgv1 .

These numbers are high, what if 10% of the people were serial killers in a restaurant… Go on in?

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

High relative to what?
20% of Trump supporters think we should still have slavery.

jgv1 .

That sounds made up, what is a slave good for? If you read G. Washington diaries, not much value in slavery. Poor work, apathetic attitude, dangerous to maintain, life time care for elderly, housing, much oversight, health care for sick, bad slaves outbred the better slaves, and the shame of being a flesh trader. Ultimately, farm productivity was rubbish with slavery. Ohio economy was significantly better than Slave Kentucky on practically the same soil.

Even today, many Indian tribes with federal credits would rather hire and pay undocumented Latin Americans than African Americans, who would cost $0 after federal credits.

Slaves as domestics? you could get a personal assistant with a liberal arts degree from Vassar for $30k/yr or a digital college-educated assistant in the Philipines for $10k/yr. A “slave” would cost $0 but what skills, manners, hygiene, risks, or conversation? Where would you put this slave and it’s just a matter of time before the slave sets you on fire as you sleep or poisons your kids.

Megan

your so wrong there and either or actually, That’s what we fought to stop. Not what they jumped up on and wore pride flags for.. media

Vain

MAx Galka…I don’t care if that comment is 2 years old, you seriously lost me there.

“20% of Trump supporters think we should still have slavery.”
…
Beautiful statistic, pure coincidence that the result is such a simple number, totally not made up.
Yes; keep pulling things out of your ass.

The problem with polls is that people can lie. Polls are polls, you ask a question and get an answer…nice attempt to make all the other polls seem like irrelevant or unscientific witout a single decent argument being made.

Anyone who answers “don’t know” is not “moderate” at all. How would you feel about Whites claiming they “don’t know” what to think of the KKK? They’d be described as white supremacists.
If you don’t condemn it, you support it…period.

This is what you call unrepresentative or unscientific…a study conducted by a team, including statistician Professor Stefano Iacus, political scientist Andrea Ceron, and translators, an analysis of over 2 million posts. Their peer-revieuwed methods have a 95% to 99% accuracy rate. It was published by The Guardian.

That the country where I was born and still live (Belgium) was found to have 35% of muslims in online posts supporting the jihadist group is a bit scary, isn’t it?

However; what was really scary to me is this: terrorism accounted for only 4,7% of the negative sentiments…that’s less than 1/20. Violence was the reason for 28,9% of the negative sentiments, to be fair.

*Second joke*

Your argument against all other polls than the ones you’ve cited is…a single article from freaking Express.co.uk.

That’s like me stating that “all mainstream media is bullshit, because this single article by the New York Times is bullshit”.

Very nice try, Galka.

*Third joke*

I had a look at the questions, which you called representative.

“Thinking about the persons and the groups which are working now in Syria, Generally, do you think that their influence is negative or positive on the matters in Syria? Is that influence strongly or somehow?”
…
Not even specified, this might as well be a question about US interventions, god knows.

“Considering their recent policies, what is your view of these entities?”
…
In some other comment you and/or another Islamdefender claimed that many of the people in a poll might not be aware of 7/7, 9/11, Isis, Al Qaeda and what not…but they do know what words like “policies” or “entities” means…

Yes, of course.

“Some people describe the following movements as terrorist while others describe them as non terrorist. Do you think ISIL is a terrorist movement or non terrorist movement?”
…
This isn’t quite the right question.
It doesn’t question whether they agree with the cause and/or the methods.

I’m really wondering why not a single one of these studies has decent questions.

“To what extent do you support or oppose the declared
objectives of the anti-ISIL campaign to “degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL”?”
…
The favorable view of ISIS is not support instead of support…?

“In the conflict raging in Syria, whom do you most favor?”
…
They get to chose between terrorists and American globalism…not representative.
I don’t care who they most favor, I care who they favor.

*Endnote*

This post is a joke and I only had a brief look at it so far.

TripoliSamson

Boko haram, isis, the taliban, al qaeda, hamas, hezb’allah, abu sayyaf, and the 80+ islamic terrorist organizations the UAE listed…gee, i wonder if there’s a pattern here. Or is it like Obama says, the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam? You know, the pedophile maniac.

ddanny1

I’m a little late to the party but consider this. Muslims perception of ISIS is formed by the information they receive in regard to ISIS. In many, if not most Muslim countries the press is controlled or heavily influenced by either the government or religious leaders. I don’t know about other countries but I have read news stories by Nigerian sources in which ISIS is described as defenders of Islam. There is no mention of their murderous side. If a reporter was to write about it they wouldn’t publish it and he would be arrested and/or killed.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

That’s my understanding as well. Much of the Middle East’s older generations are illiterate and I suspect have very little access to the press. I saw a survey from Afghanistan that showed a large percentage (maybe 30%) of people had never heard of the Islamic State.

Earlyhaze

ISIS is such a cowardly group. They kill woman children, elderly. They have no respect, dignity. moral or values. Just pathetic cowards that need to climb into a who;e and pull a rock over it. I would love to go hand to hand with one of them. They would not do that as they are cowards

Rabid__Dog

Man i’d like to know who made such an accurate research in country where, in the most part, western people aren’t even allowed to step in.
Indians call centers?

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Which country doesn’t allow western people in?

Rabid__Dog

I’m sure that in Syria or Yemen western people may be not so welcome.

That’s what i’ve heard at least. 😉

And anyway, you forget that in the koran mohammed says that’s a “duty” for all muslim to lie and deceive the “unbelievers”.

Those are just some of my concerns about the reliability of this “survey”.

Sage

No one was stupid enough to think all Germans everywhere were Nazis in the ’30s-’40s. But the fact that someone’s here to tell us we shouldn’t lump all Muslims together when roughly the same amount of them support ISIS as Germans supported Nazism, speaks to overt moral grandstanding. If we shouldn’t care that 10-15% of Muslims support ISIS, then we shouldn’t care that roughly the same Americans think most Muslims support ISIS.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

>”someone’s here to tell us we shouldn’t lump all Muslims together”

Where do you get this from the post? I deliberately avoided drawing any conclusions about what the numbers mean.

Jon Snyder

What a way to spin such huge support for Isis. The mainstream media seems to strive to instill the opposite view as implied by the article. The mainstream media gives the impression that Isis is generally rejected by all but the most radical Muslims – maybe constituting a small fraction of 1%. The idea that actual support is 10 to 40 times greater than this is astounding!

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

There is no “view” here, just observed data. Everyone is free to draw their own conclusions.

Jon Snyder

You’ve made me reconsider my comments. Although I have/had the impression from the media that only a tiny portion of Muslims support Isis, you cite the Brookings Report that strongly suggests most Americans believe otherwise.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

For what it’s worth, I don’t think your comment about the media is wrong. The media has been misleading in both directions (e.g. the IB Times headline mentioned above — ISIS is “almost universally hated”).

http://ipv6.org/wp-admin BioHaqS0X

Someone that’s done their homework on this subject! Most Americans’ understanding of Islam is massively warped. They rarely know the difference between Sunni and Shia (let alone Sufi.) Recently, I saw someone on Jimmy Swaggart’s channel talking about adding Muslim Brotherhood to the U.S. list of designated terrorist groups; I thought that was reserved for those who use violence to achieve their goals..They came to power peacefully in Egypt several years ago and were removed from power without a fight as well. The false accusations have reached epic proportions.

http://jgame.net.au/ Nyanyako

One fact is not mentioned in these articles. Internet access, and even electricity is less common in the countries with very high levels of ISIS support. Many of these people have never even seen a news broadcast, and they don’t have reliable services such as daily newspapers either. e.g. internet uptake is only 18% in Pakistan, while both Nigeria and Bukino Faso have less than 15% of the population with electricity. For example: 7% of Nigerian /Christians/ express support for ISIS, not just Muslims. So it might be “scary” that this many people “support” ISIS, but what does that figure mean in a country that basically has no media access as we understand it? How informed can we expect them to be about events happening thousands of miles away from them?

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

In this post, I intentionally tried to stay away from explaining what these numbers “mean.” But in my opinion, I think you’re right. It’s easy to assume everyone has the same information we do in the west, but that is no doubt not the case. Among the older generations, only a small percentage of the population is even literate.http://metrocosm.com/maps-of-the-middle-east/

Ned Hoon

The problem isn’t a percentage point the problem is Islam itself.Even if half of 1% of Muslims supported ISIS that is an open door to any country in the world for extremists.The whole cult I mean religion needs to go

PsycheDismantled

I saw a Pew Poll that showed over 82 percent of Syrians supported ISIS, and over 92 percent in Saudi showed support for ISIS. Guess what every Muslims supports ISIS, because it’s not radical Islam, it’s ISLAM that’s the problem. Read the Quran, educate yourself, stop taking the word of ignorant lying Liberals, and Muslims. You wonder why thousands of very little girls are being gang raped by these monsters? Not even including the thousands more women who have suffered unimaginable violations to their bodies by Muslims. Stop being complacent and do your homework. Islam has been committing atrocities since the dawn of it’s evil creation. ISIS isn’t anything new, their “faith” hasn’t been taken over all of a sudden. They have been murdering, gang raping, and terrorizing innocent people since their own prophet Mohammad (who was a Jihadist himself) created the “religion”.
1) Thou shall RAPE, marry, and divorce Pre-pubescent girls. Koran 65:4
2)Thou shall have Sex slaves, work slaves Koran 4:3,4:24,5:89,33:50,58:3,70:30
3) Thou shall beat your sex slaves, work slaves, and wives. Koran 4:34
4) Thou shall have 4 Muslim male witnesses to prove rape. (Obviously any male witnesses would be part of the assault, and therefor no woman can or will have justice as she suffers the most unspeakable horror) Koran 24:13 It’s also common practice to lash a raped woman. Shara law blames the victim.
5) Thou shall KILL those who insult Islam or Mohammad. Koran 33:57
6)Thou shall CRUCIFY and Amputate non-muslims. Koran 8:12,47:4
7)Thou shall KILL non-muslims to guarantee receiving 72 virgins in heaven. If you are familiar with the disgusting, barbaric, and inhumane sexual depravity of this “religion” you would understand why this is a good thing for them. Koran 9:111 (get it 9/11) Never forget?….You did
8) Thou shall KILL anyone who leaves Islam Koran 2:217,4:89
9) Thou shall Behead non-muslims Koran 8:12,47:4
10) Thou shall KILL AND be killed for Islamic Allah. Koran 9:5
11) Thou shall terrorize non-muslims. Koran 8:12,8″60
12) Thou shall steal and rob from non-muslims (As they flood our countries and drain our welfare systems, they are stealing from us) Koran Chapter 8 (Booty/Spoils)
13) Thou shall LIE (as in this Pew poll) to strengthen and further Islam. Koran 3:28,16:106
14) Thou shall fight non-muslims even if you don’t want to. Koran 2:216
15) Thou shall not take non-muslims as friends. (Which is why that father killed his daughter for having a Christian friend, google it.) Koran 5:51
16) Thou shall treat non-muslims as the vilest, creatures deserving no mercy (which is how they can repeatedly gang rape a 5 year old child, and they have thousands of times.) Koran 98:6
17) Thou shall treat non-muslims as sworn enemies. Koran 4:101
18) Thou shall KILL non-muslims for not converting to Islam (It’s Islam, not radical jihadists) Koran 9:29
I could tell you about Ayatollah Kho Meni Islam’s highest leader who said and I quote: A man can quench his sexual thirst by use of a BABY. The only condition is that he does not penetrate the vagina, but anal sex is okay. This is ISLAM. He also went on to say: It is better if a girl marries so early that she gets her first period in the home of her husband rather than her father. Every father who gives his daughter away in marriage at such an early age will have obtained a place in heaven, You did hear about that 6 year old baby who was raped to death on her marriage bed didn’t you? Oh well probably not. Further more he said: A man can have anal sex with his own SON, father, or brother after marriage and it will not be grounds for divorce, the marriage continues. So, totally okay to anal rape your sons in this faith. This is just the tip of the iceburg of this disgusting, unforgivable, and vile religion. You need to wake up, Muslims are playing you so they can rape your daughters.

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